Parents Have To Parent - It's A Tough Job To Be Sure - But No One Can Do It But You

 

This morning I read a horrible news story about a 12yo girl who was beaten and tortured by 2 other 12yo girls at what was supposed to be a 'sleep over. That is a horrible situation and the girls must be punished - but let's talk honestly here.

If You Wouldn't Keep Running Them Out Of The Profession, Teachers Wouldn't Leave

Last month, State Superintendent Hofmeister (who referred to the recent Governor-requested, first ever audit of the OSDE as "yet another attack on public education") happily announced she had gifted Teach For America over four million dollars to fill empty teaching positions. What she NEGLECTED to say however, was major.

New Poll Indicates Only 7% of Oklahomans Would Homeschool. Why Don't The Other 93%?

A recent poll commissioned and published by OCPA (Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs) indicating widespread support of school choice (76%) also included the following information:

“If you could select any type of school in order to obtain the best education for your child or children, and financial costs and transportation were of no concern, what type of school would you select?”

Traditional public school … 46%
Charter school … 9%
Private or parochial school … 34%
Home school … 7%
Don’t know/refused … 4%

The 7% figure surprised me. 

Questions: Drain the swamp? Betsy DeVos? Where do parents come in?

Dear President-Elect Trump,

It's November 24th, and though I run a small farm and am up early every day anyway, I'm up this morning - not readying myself to make Thanksgiving dinner - but writing to you about my frustration over your pick for US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.

Rudderless Teachers?

I read an article recently in EdWeek by an Oklahoma teacher, "Without The Common Core in Oklahoma". Obviously, as someone who fought to repeal the standards, I feel sad that without Common Core, this teacher feels "rudderless". 

The teacher explains:

The thought of moving backward to PASS (or worse) fills me and thousands of other Oklahoma teachers and administrators with mind-numbing angst. The state has invested countless hours and a great deal of professional-development money so that educators, curriculum specialists, and districts would be in a strong position to put the standards in place. To this end, my own district implemented new standards-aligned academic vocabulary, which mandates a grade-level list of words for K-5 students. We purchased many standards-aligned professional materials for teachers to help them in the implementation of instructional units. While those materials and new word lists can be tweaked to reflect whatever might replace the common core, many of my colleagues are shaking their heads in disbelief at the complete waste of time and resources that has resulted from this turn in state politics.

Mind-numbing angst?  I find this peculiar, I really do.  I truly cannot understand why any teacher would be filled with “mind-numbing angst” by the removal of a set of standards – especially when the testing portion of the standards will be more general knowledge in nature and not truly ‘high stakes’ for this next two years (and hopefully long term).

In my opinion, really great teachers are those that simply need to know the developmental age of their children.  Once they are very familiar with that, they can pull information from across the World Wide Web, the library, older text books – it matters not.  Information to impart to children of all ages is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week anymore. 

When I taught - and it’s not much different today, according to my discussions with teacher friends - Professional Development was/is something you did/do to keep your teacher’s certification.  In the 6 years I taught public school, never one time did I learn something I felt I would feel comfortable using, or desire to use, in my classroom from teacher ‘training’.  One teacher friend I have known for years, just told me about a teacher training event she went to that so upset her conservative views she felt robbed of the time she had to travel to and from and stay.  That simply isn’t right in my view.

Maybe I’m just way too independent (and conservative) for my own good – I’m happy to acknowledge that – but I’m concerned that this ‘angst’ has to do with the way teachers are taught today, from the classroom through teacher training.

I achieved a Master’s Degree in Biology and became Alternatively Certified.  I must say, the three classes I had to take in order to become certified to teach in Oklahoma made me shake my head.  The course on testing frustrated me so badly I felt it necessary to argue (respectfully) with my instructor frequently about her very liberal philosophy which she would insert into class discussions dealing with everything from teaching to breathing. 

While studying for both my Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees, everyone in the College of Math and Science receiving science degrees knew the students who were getting teaching degrees.  They took a very small fraction of the coursework we took, but yet, were expected to teach others science.  That frustrated me.  Why would those teaching others about science need to have so many fewer hours LEARNING science than I as a scientist?  It’s still a conundrum to me.

I have many wonderful teacher friends and I know many wonderful teachers.  I KNOW these teachers can succeed teaching anything to anyone no matter what their administrations – or the state – throws at them.  It’s more than just a job – it’s a VOCATION – a way of life.

Is it possible that teachers who find themselves ‘rudderless’ following this last in a long line of changes created by the state meddling in local education*, might want to find a profession less frustrating?  I wonder.

In closing, here is a thought I added to our ROPE Facebook page a few days ago about teaching.  You may not agree, and I can appreciate that, but I would hope it’s always good to see another’s perspective:

Once upon a time, when I was a teacher, in the days before high stakes testing, I managed my own classroom. That meant, I looked at the PASS standards, aligned my lesson plans to what the kids were expected to know, and I taught them the best way I knew how. I had a ton of animals in my classroom, I did as many labs as I could with limited resources, used videos, computer programs and simple note taking to impart the information I felt it was important for them to know as individuals living in the world. I didn't teach because it would be on the test, I taught because I thought it was important for them to know - the information would help them make sense of the world around them. Why we've turned the process of educating children into a game of who's spending money more accountably, instead of who's teaching kids what they need to know to be well rounded individuals who can be anything they want, I don't know, but it's frustrating to both students and teachers and is leading to education that is anything but educating. We must make high stakes testing stop. We have no choice.

*Does anyone realize that if the money for public education was provided locally for schools and not by the state, local control would take on a greater meaning and schools would finally be accountable to the community they serve – not the larger entity of the state?  Think about it; schools managed by the communities they serve under the guidelines of rules provided by parents via the school board, executed by the administration (not the state).  It sounds like a 'charter' school - with the accountability to taxpayers they don't have. THAT sounds like real school choice. Don't you think that sound like the way it was supposed to be in the first place?  I do!

Prepared Remarks to Ok State Board on A-F Grading System

Prepared Remarks
Oklahoma State Department of Education
School Board Meeting
February 28, 2013
Jenni White
President
Restore Oklahoma Public Education
jenni@RestoreOkPublicEducation.com

Board Members and Guests,

I taught in public school nearly 10 years.  I loved teaching.  My classroom was my own little microcosm of the world where I interacted with all sorts of young people in all sorts of stages of intellectual development representing many different layers of society.

I can remember standing in the hall across from my classroom at Independence Charter Middle School - where I taught Science on the same team with my mother, who taught English – leaning against the lockers, watching the kids go by and thinking there really couldn’t be a better job.  I got to interact with kids – which was good AND bad some days; sometimes all in the same class period!   I got to see recognition of a particular concept light up their faces.  I got to re-learn some of the concepts I taught them and see those in a new light.  I loved sharing what I knew with others and making it new to them.

I quit teaching nearly 10 years ago to stay home with our oldest son.  When I left, my responsibilities included; turning in yearly lesson plans, meeting the Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS objectives) for my grade level in science and meeting the needs of parents, students and my building administration to the best of my ability.

I wouldn’t return to teach in the public system today.

The teachers I have known and worked with were all self-starters.  Teachers really have to be.  You can’t possibly handle a room of 7th graders AND teach a lesson if you’re not.   Teaching can’t survive micromanaging.  Ten years ago, we teachers used to grouse about assemblies, because, after turning in a yearly lesson plan you worked all summer to put together, you couldn’t possibly miss a day or even an hour and still have the kids prepared to leave the classroom knowing what they needed to know.  Not just to pass a test – but to be where they needed to be developmentally.  If lesson plans are thrown out of whack by snow days and assemblies, what in the world happens when you add state and federal teaching mandates?

Education ‘reform’ today is killing the teaching profession.  Accountability is all well and good, but teacher accountability should rest with the building principal and finally, the superintendent and school board – not a school grade calculated utilizing factors over which many teachers have no control.  How in the world do you keep a high school student in school?  Chain him or her to a desk?  How many factors can contribute to a child’s poor grade on a test?  How many of those are the responsibility of the teacher?  How can nebulous factors ever be quantifiable?

This A-F grading system is clearly not appropriate.  For all the lip service we give to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and its level of importance in the lives of American children in the ‘21^st Century’, to think our state can’t understand and/or apply the basic tenet of Scientific Inquiry to a system that will affect every child and every student in public school in Oklahoma, seems completely inconsistent.   Many categories for calculation in this A-F grading system are not replicable.  The first tenet of scientific inquiry is that the system be replicable.  If it is not replicable, it is not valid.  How can you justify grading a school on a system that isn’t valid?  How is it the state’s job to grade a school?  Isn’t that the job of the community which it serves? 

Recently, a letter released from the Department of Education by Dr. David N. Figlio (as released in an Oklahoman editorial) indicated support for the A-F grading system.  Of note, the letter didn’t speak to the validity of Oklahoma’s grading system of which there is dispute, but more to the ‘idea’ of a grading system.  In fact, in an earlier paper, “What’s in a Grade?  School Report Cards and the Housing Market”, Dr. Figlio’s research suggests,

 “school rankings under these systems tend to be quite unstable”.

He goes on to say,

“…school accountability measures such as the Florida system and the new federal system are largely unrelated to the school’s contribution to student performance and are likely measured with considerable noise.”

Accountability in ANY taxpayer funded system  is absolute necessity.  Micromanagement through the employ of non-valid systems of measurement is not.

Let’s step back here a bit.  Instead of following the education ‘reform’ measures of other states and those prescribed by the federal government in order to get a waiver from the already overreaching No Child Left Behind law, find out what works in Oklahoma – what works on local levels in local communities.  If we can’t do that – if we refuse to do that – we will continue to bleed good teachers from the system and micromanage public schools out of existence.

Attack of the 50-Foot History Teacher

 

I read the most fantastic, truly enlightening (in a, “I can’t believe they really just came fully out of the liberal closet” way) article recently, entitled, “Response: Ways To Deal With ‘History Myths’ In the Classroom" by an author named Larry Ferlazzo. 

After the first election of Barack Obama as president of the United States, I came to the sudden conclusion that America must be educating our youth improperly or incompletely in US History to have so many voters not know what a “Marxist” was and/or how to spot one.  Consequently, I began doing research in US History education in Oklahoma.  What I found startled me enough to co-found an organization (Restore Oklahoma Public Education) dedicated to exposing public education in our state.

“Response” has the dubious honor of containing nearly every category of leftist education drivel I have studied and/or cataloged over the last four years.  After reading this article, I thought it might be helpful to point out to readers a few of the ways it is disingenuous.  Over the years, I've seen many a parent/voter/taxpayer become simply mesmerized by all the rhetoric education 'experts' bloviate by the bucketfuls in order to finance and perpetuate their tree-hugging, Dewey-loving, social-justice-spreading dismantling of America.   People want the truth about education issues, but like deer in the headlights of a Mac truck, they can't figure out how to get past the loud, scary noise to find it.

Toward this end, I have highlighted some of the more astonishing passages from this article.  As you will note, the depths of self-delusion these people have plumbed to truly believe they are NOT perpetuating history myths themselves is quite fascinating.  In fact, that is the most laughable part of this whole, sad treatise.  “NO, do NOT perpetuate history myths”, the author says.  The only problem with their logic is that apparently the only myths present in the system are those stemming from a conservative (accurate/non-PC) viewpoint.  How do I know?  

Let’s deconstruct Mr. Bizarro’s, oops, I mean Ferlazzo’s article.  To do so, I will provide actual quotes from his writing followed by what I will call a MYTH BUSTER ALERT (MBA).  Hopefully, this will draw attention to the inconsistencies in Mr. Ferlazzo’s philosophies - or at least create a very stark outline of liberal (progressive) education ideals.

Mr. Ferlazzo begins innocently enough by asking the question, 

“What history myths are being perpetuated by textbooks that you attempt to break down/challenge in your classroom? How do you do that”

To answer, the writer steers his reader to some resources he insists can combat this phenomenon:

The Best Teacher Resource Sites For Social Justice Issues, The Best Resources For Teaching "What If?" History Lessons and History materials he uses in his IB (International Baccalaureate) “theory of knowledge” class.  

MBA:  The term Social Justice is a very liberal philosophy of teaching in which "educators may employ social justice instruction to promote unity on campus, as well as mitigate boundaries to the general curriculum. These boundaries often include race, class, ability, language, appearance, sexuality, and gender." Gosh and golly – no room for political views here!

MBA:  The IB curricula are written by UNESCO, the education arm of the UN.  ROPE has studied the IB curricula and it’s penchant for ‘educating for sustainable development’.  Yes, if you know what Agenda 21 is, then UNESCO’s your partner to get ‘er done!  Let the IB curriculum educate children on how to implement Agenda 21 in a city/county/state/country near you!  UNESCO will also help everyone everywhere implement the Common Core (which is both ‘core’ and ‘common’ and decidedly UnAmerican).

Mr. Ferlazzo goes on from there, to introduce three people that will tell you (the US History teacher) how to avoid bringing history myths into the classroom.   

The first one is Stephen Lazar.  Here is a brief CV afforded by the author,

Stephen Lazar, a National Board Certified Social Studies teacher, is co-founder of Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City where he teaches students Social Studies and English, is Assessment Coordinator, and Union Chapter Leader. Over the past two years, Lazar worked with Social Studies teachers across NYC and the nation to support to support inquiry-based instruction, project-based learning, and Common Core implementation. He is a member of the Teacher Leaders Network.

MBA:  Stephen Lazar is a Union Leader (who could forget the many colorful antics of the NEA whose reading list containing Saul Alinsky drew enough fire for them to remove from their site his “Rules For Radicals” as suggested reading) that promotes the Common Core and teaches at a high school employing the following philosophy, "Underlying all of our Habits is recognition of fundamental human dignity, expressed in the unwavering core values of Commitment to Peace, Commitment to Diversity and Commitment to Growth." Can you find anything but liberal buzz words in that definition?  In addition, this is an 'experiential' high school - in other words, very indicative of the John Dewey (Marxist/Socialist) teaching style responsible for much of the education ‘reform’ programs of today and the associated decline of public education.

Mr. Lazar gives himself away immediately:

When I became a teacher a decade ago, I entered the classroom equipped with James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me and Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States in the other. I was convinced that the largest problem with history education was the absence of certain stories or perspectives from our textbooks. I saw myself as a myth-buster, ready to challenge students' preconceived notions of Columbus as hero or John Brown as insane terrorist.

MBA:  Stephen Lazar actually has the unmitigated gal to turn us ALL toward Howard Zinn – a known Marxist - as a method for DISPENSING historical myth in the classroom.  Truly, this is laughable.  Get a load of this Cap Times (progressive) blog where the writer laments President Obama not invoking the name of Howard Zinn during his inauguration.  After all, the great One should recognize ‘real’ American history and be unafraid and unapologetic about delivering that to the American people.  Really.

Ferlazzo then goes on to a narrative about Rosa Parks, which as a Biology major, I’ll leave for debunking by some historical truth-teller to be named later.

Our next author to respond is ReLeah Cossett Lent.  We’re told she is an international literacy consultant and ASCD author of a book called, Overcoming Textbook Fatigue: 21st Century Tools to Revitalize Teaching and Learning:  Just the title of this book sounds exactly like every John Dewey notion in black and white – kids get bored listening to a teacher, kids need to be active doing projects in order to learn and we can’t really have them in a musty old textbook when they can learn so much from each other!  

MBA:  When I went to look up her book, I found it on the ASCD website.  ASCD stands for Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.  There is a chapter in every state and while Oklahoma’s chapter didn’t put up any obvious red flags, the ASCD full site sure did.  Again, we find here a very progressive (Dewey) education philosophy – ‘whole child’, 21^st Century Skills (very Dewey), ‘health and learning’(page 5).

Ms. Cossett Lent says, 

“Who can know all of the inaccuracies that history textbooks may contain? Experts in one historical area or another often are dismayed at the simplistic, sometimes misleading information presented in textbooks. Simple narratives that distill complex events into a nice story, lists of facts devoid of any emotional underpinning, or unintended bias resulting from the selection of, say, one photograph over another can skew readers' understanding of historical events, perhaps for a lifetime.“

Well goodness!  Who in the world would want kids studying lists of facts?  Facts are certainly politicized mythology, right?

Now, here comes my FAVORITE contributor to the article – Bill Bigelow!  Bill, as we find out from our author, is the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine.  He also co-directs the online Zinn Education Project, which provides free curriculum materials to help teachers "teach outside the textbook."

MBA:  Ok, I know, Zinn again.  But, here’s a tasty morsel…one of the articles our editor has put on the front page of the Rethinking Schools website is entitled, “Lessons in Social Justice Unionism – An Interview with Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis”.  Yes, absolutely, NO politics there and certainly, there can be ZERO mythology in a story with that title I feel certain.

Of course, his treatise is eye-poppingly progressive!  You really must go to the original article and read the entire thing – unless you’re a conservative with a heart condition and then, I just sincerely don’t recommend the read as it could be hazardous to your health.

Here are a couple of lines to illustrate my point:

And, as Bill McKibben pointed out recently in a remarkable article in Rolling Stone magazine, "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math," from a mathematical standpoint, it is demonstrably impossible to prevent the climate from spinning out of control with unimaginably horrible consequences, if we burn the fossil fuels, including coal, that energy corporations are in the process of exploiting and selling.

When it comes to teaching about what matters in the world, teachers should not rely on textbooks published by enormous corporations that profit from--and in many cases, create--our most dire environmental and social crises. We need to work together through our unions, professional associations, school communities, and activist organizations to build a curriculum of conscience, one that addresses the most significant challenges facing humanity. As June Jordan wrote in her "Poem for South African Women," "We are the ones we have been waiting for."

 Certainly, no mythology present in any of that.

 At the end of the article, Mr. Ferlazzo mentions that quite a few people left responses to his question on The Zinn Education Project's Facebook page.

He then includes a few:

Max Castillo:

That indigenous, Mesoamerican, aboriginal civilizations became civilized through the conquering and interactions with European civilizations. We need to teach our students to value our indigenous cultures and heritage as early as possible.

Dennis Shaffner:

Ask students to question the bias in any textbook: easy in art history if woman artists are omitted.

MBA:  Seriously?  That's too easy to waste the keystrokes.  If you can't see those for yourself, there is most probably no saving you from yourself.

Truly, this situation MUST be seen as THE integral problem with America today - history teachers teaching mythological history aligned fully and completely with their narcissistic, thoughtless worldviews completely ignorant of the history they suggest they know.  How else can you explain the slide of a once-great Republic into the entitlement abyss of socialism? And so I will end with two applicable quotes from Winston Churchill as food for thought - though I’m almost certain there are zero public school graduates under 30 who know who this is.  

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.    

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

SNAP Goes the Teacher...

Today, I saw Rick Hess' blog, "A Good Teacher Is Hard To Find".  While I didn't find this guest post by Daniel Lautzenheiser completely egregious, I do have problems with many of the things he said - and his overall premise.

The trick isn't obsession over what qualifies a teacher to join the profession. Our policies should instead be loose on entrance and tight on results--encouraging maximum flexibility for states, districts, and charter schools to recruit teachers as they see fit while seeking to find better ways to identify good and bad teachers, reward the good ones and keep them in the classroom, and move out the bad ones.
What this means will vary by district-to-district, school-to-school, but a few quick thoughts:
-we should continue to invest in designing smart and robust teacher evaluation tools, which include value-added measurements of student performance--where appropriate and as a piece of the puzzle.
-teacher compensation should not be linked solely to degrees earned or years of experience but to quality of work, including student achievement.
-we should allow more teachers to enter via alternative certification programs, and give charter schools increased flexibility to hire the kinds of teachers befitting their unique missions.
-schools and districts should consider a classroom career ladder that permits good teachers to remain in the classroom while affording them opportunities to grow professionally.
In the same way there's not a single "what works" for identifying good teachers before they enter the profession, there's similarly not a one-size-fits-all on the evaluation end. But the broad principal--loose on entrance, tight on results--will permit us to rethink how we go about recruiting, training, and evaluating teachers in the 21st century.

Ooohhhh.  This sounds awe-inspiring frankly, but my experience just doesn't add up to this assessment from a man who has probably NEVER been in front of a classroom in his life (Daniel is, program manager in education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute). 


This was my take on the issue at hand:

As a former science teacher (now homeschool mom) - my perspective is quite different. I have a M.S. in biology. I was alternatively certified. I taught at a charter school.

Though I followed the state standards for each of the grades I taught and used the books appropriate for the age level - I was deemed "too hard". I "asked too much of my students". I was finally put on a plan of improvement after being called on the carpet in front of parents in my principal's office numerous times.

In my experience, principals don't want good teachers because parents complain. Good teachers don't want to teach the way they know they should because they'll likely be constantly having to explain themselves to avoid firing.

All this nonsense about linking student test scores to teacher pay and all the other "accountability" reforms (ala Jeb Bush) that states keep signing on to, are not going to amount to a hill of beans other than to keep the really good teachers from signing up to teach. How can one teach when you're suddenly responsible for whether a child had breakfast or a fight with his mother the morning of the test?

It cost me a chunk of money to get my alternative certification just to have to constantly justify my reasoning behind trying to make my students do something more than the 'busy work' the parents apparently desired and the principal wanted. Why in the WORLD would good people desire to have that kind of job other than the sheer idealism that many of us have entering the teaching profession (that is soon beaten out of us to the point that we leave)?

Until the now-majority of PARENTS decide they want more for their children than a SNAP card, we're all sunk. No amount of coercion by a state or federal government will fix that. As soon as parents/students have to reap the whirlwind that would be ZERO public assistance for the results of allowing/perpetuating mediocrity, stupidity and sloth, things will change. Until then? Buckle up for a very bumpy ride!

Here's a very interesting article I also found in EdWeek today.  Check this one out as well.  "The Pros and Cons of Accountability".